


Can We Save Your Heart Tonight?

by orphan_account



Series: Carry On Countdown 2017 [1]
Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Angst, almost, boys bein buds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 03:20:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12879096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Too mundane to be a mage, too mage to be mundane. Simon is beginning to see a dim light, and Baz is beginning to worry.





	Can We Save Your Heart Tonight?

**Author's Note:**

> lol I'm just writing these at will atm. day 1! 9 days in. its on my tumblr but the others will all be on here ;*

Day 1,  **NOV 25** : At Watford

The stained glass murals of the Great Hall were casting technicolour light on the tables and seat below – sun despite the chilled air of a sudden autumnal break. Students were arriving for their first days at Watford with bubbling excitement and poorly hemmed uniforms, wrapped up in scarves and hidden beneath their grey woollen hats. If there were snow falling from the ceiling and mugs of mulled wine being served, it would have almost felt like Christmas.

And it wasn’t that I’d been  _staring_ , but Simon Snow just seemed to slot right into place at Watford. Sitting at a table, holding himself, doing absolutely nothing spectacular – he could be anywhere, wearing anything, and he’d still be the Watford poster child. The parents all passed him with a hand on his shoulder and a jaunty comment that Snow ( _somehow_ ) met with an endless supply of enthusiasm. I watched him for only 10 minutes, marvelling at how he could go from all giggles and smiles and  _thank you much!_ ’s, to looking deeply disturbed by whatever was on his mind.

And it wasn’t that I was concerned, but I was beginning to wonder what really  _was_  on his mind.

To keep my small burst of courage, I counted the steps it took for me to cross the hall to sit with him. 10 long strides, past 5 empty tables and a crying first year, and Snow didn’t notice at all until I was sitting next to him.

“What do you want?” He shivered.

Wordlessly, I offered him my scarf. It was so automatic that it looked like I always intended to give it to him. Obviously, he didn’t take it. It was, after all, mine. And he was, after all, fucking stubborn.

“This was up in our room, on your bed,” I lied with a breeze. “No note, so clearly it’s from your owner. Surprised he didn’t think of a leash before now, with all the running off you do.”

If I could have bottled the way Snow’s face softened at the idea of getting a gift (from the Mage, no less), I would have. It was cruel to lie to him, and on one hand I didn’t care. On the other, I did, but that clashed with my aesthetic.

“Really?” Snow whispered.

“Crowley, that’s sad. No, it’s mine, but if you stay out here you’re going to get a cold. I’m not going to put up with you hacking and choking all night, Chosen One.”

I didn’t know Simon would actually cry at this ordeal. If I had, I wouldn’t have told him the truth. Too many people looking on at him to be the strong heroic type that’ll answer all of their Humdrum woes. Without a second thought needed, I stood and pulled him up with me.

“What are you doing?” He very nearly sobbed.

“You’re a mess, I’m doing you a fucking favour,” I hissed, grabbing his arm  _maybe_  too hard. Cute as he was, he was still a hassle to deal with.

We walked in that way that people do when one of them is this distressed. Quickly, knocking shoulders with people and only apologising in passing, striding past concerned looks.

And we were close. So close.

Even Bunce saw, looking about as horrified as I expected. She tried to call out, but I shot her a look with a shake of my head and hoped she wouldn’t break into our room. Something about that scenario suggested that I’d not be allowed in on such a council meeting.

For all of his strength, Snow must have done an awful lot of thinking on the way to our dorm. His magic was intoxicating, making the air drinkable, spilling out all over our room. The  _last_ thing I need him to do was go off.

“Snow,” I warn. I think. I could barely hear myself in the dense haze of magic. “Simon, calm down. Whatever it is, just breathe.”

He did his best, I’ll give him that.

“Simon.” I grabbed his chin and made him look at me, hands sliding up either side of his face. “Simon,  _breathe_.”

Now, I’m not a therapist, but I can definitively say that no situation has ever been solved but holding your breathe and setting a castle on fire with your rogue anxiety. Then again, what would I know?

However, with something to ground him and something to focus him, the air thinned out. I lost my balance just a little bit, falling away from him as the gravity in the room settled back to normal.

“Crowley on a  _fuck wheel_ , Snow,” I all but breathed. “What the fuck is going on with you?”

I didn’t expect him to laugh so mirthlessly. That sarcastic drip that I know exclusively from practice was so unsettling in his patchwork accent, coming from those sunshine kissed lips. I’d never heard him sound like such a  _villain_

“You,” he wept, “won’t even let me get to the end of my sentence before you tell me that you told me so.”

Trying to keep up with that sentence was hard enough. Realising what he was trying to say was even worse, because of course I knew he was right.

“Go on, then,” I teased. “My ego is bruised. I need a tragedy like this.”

_Like you_.

“Tell me,” he whispered. “Honestly. How far do you think I’m going to get with magic? Career wise.  _Assuming_ I survive to the end of Watford.”

“Don’t say that,” I seethe. I don’t mean to, but I’m not one for backing down.

“ _How far_ , Baz?!” He yelled.

“ _Nowhere!_ ” I finally admitted. We both knew it. Everyone did, I suppose. I hated to say it, but the World of Mages was just expecting him to get killed in the final battle against the Humdrum, because Simon Snow was more than just the Chosen One. He was a  _burden_. “What do you want me to say?!”

“Exactly that.” Snow let a couple of tears loose. “And how much do you think I can do  _without_  magic? In in the mundane world?”

I didn’t want him to speak like this. I never wanted to hear him so hopeless.

“The answer is the same, Baz,” he cried. “What am I doing? Why should I keep showing up here? Every year is worse than the last. I’m a fucking time-bomb.”

At last, he was realising what I’d wanted to tell him for so long: he was being used as weapon. Nothing more. This was what the Mage  _wanted_.

“I don’t know what to do,” he laughed miserably. “I can’t do maths, I’ve never learnt any kind of science. I don’t have  _any_ certificates – and I won’t. No one-” He wrapped his arms around himself. “-No one wants me.”

He’d walked away from me at some point. He wasn’t quite going off, but I could feel it getting too intense in the room, even from were he was pacing over at the heads of our beds. I can feel his motion as it pulls the gravity of the room, though I can’t tell if that’s his magic or my devotion to him.

“Snow,” I choke out, feeling that familiar, burning suffocation.

“You called me Simon before,” he hissed accusingly.

“Oh,  _fuck off_ , I’m not doing this with you right now. Just calm down, Snow, I can barely breathe.”

Snow’s breathing was heaving so powerfully that it coaxed my own lungs to synchronise, the air in the room following his magic. In a desperate attempt to save Mummers Hall from, as the Chosen One himself put it, ‘a time-bomb’, I walk over to him and place a hand on his arm.

“Simon,” I prompt evenly, very nearly slapping him as I try to hold his cheek. “Simon, calm down. It’s okay, just- focus.” And while I wasn’t thinking: “Babe,  _focus_.”

Simon seemed to lean into my hand and shallowed out his hyperventilation to a helpless sobbing. Even as the magic fizzled away and I felt the oxygen go straight to my head again, I didn’t take my hand away from him. He pressed it closer to his face.

“Simon,” I mumbled. “Look, don’t...

But what was I supposed to say? Even if I had given him something to gloss it all over and hold him out for a week or so, he’d fall right back again. It was an impossible situation. How do you diffuse a time-bomb?

No, not a time-bomb. A fallen hero.

Or not a hero at all. A  _boy_.

Aleister Crowley – he was only a boy.

As stoic as I could seem, there was a soft centre that I rarely liked to indulge, for the sake of keeping up appearances. That day, however, I knew how Simon’s dilemma would end, so I held him close to me and catalogued his warmth. I recited every word it made me feel, all in my head, too fast to grasp onto anything except  _whole_. Simon sobbed, hugging me back. One hand of mine drifted to pull away from him, but he held tighter.  _Oh_ , that hurt.

“Baz,” he sobbed, muffled by my shoulder. “What do I do?”

I held onto that word – whole – as I rubbed his back. I was unable to close my eyes, staring blankly at the wall in front of me.

“Oh, Simon,” I whispered, pressing my wand to the nape of his neck.  **“** _ ** **Don’t even worry about it!****_ **”**

Because heroes must be heroes. And villains must be villains.


End file.
